In the How-To Guide to Building With Straw Bales (Load Bearing) DVD, you'll discover how this form of construction uses the bales themselves as the structural element of the home. The roof sits directly on the bale walls and the straw itself is load-bearing. Nearly two hours of instruction takes you through the entire process of building a load-bearing straw bale home in a day-by-day teaching format.

The DVD shows in detail everything from creating a pad and pier raised floor foundation to installing toe-ups, baling the walls square and plumb, using the best strapping to pre-compress your walls, installing the rafters, attaching the roof sheathing, installing windows and doors, dealing with cabinetry installations, and much more.

A hands-on knot directory outlines the function and formation of more than 70 knots and categorizes them according to physical properties, making it easy to find the right knot for the job at hand.

Best-selling author Brett Markham's new handbook gives us the mini farming basics along with in-depth tips on vegetable gardening, fermenting, composting and self-sufficiency in a handy new format and design. It includes:

• Soil management and making your own fertilizer
• Crop rotation and cover cropping
• Composting
• Seed starting and timing/planning
• Raised beds and pest management
• PVC trellising and planting spacers
• Raising chickens, making your own chicken plucker, and butchering
• Growing fruit/nut trees and vines
• Food preservation (canning and freezing)
• Fermenting wine, vinegar and cheese

With the full-color photographs that made the original Mini Farming so popular, as well as step-by-step drawings, projects, graphs and tables, you'll have everything you need for your new or established mini farm at your fingertips. So dive in and learn how to begin and cultivate your own mini farm on less than a quarter acre.

In today's busy world it's easy to understand the desire for shortcuts. With our time eaten up by work, family and errands, we almost unconsciously look for quick fixes that aren't always the healthiest for our home or family. With The New Art of Living Green, authors Erica Palmcrantz Aziz and Susanne Hovenäs dare us to stop and think for a moment about the type of chemicals we use in our home, where we buy our produce, and the amount of waste we create. With this book you'll discover simple tips and guidelines that will help you make greener choices, to the benefit of your growing family's health and a grateful Mother Earth.

This guide provides a collection of proven ways to live green practically, and on a daily basis. Learn more about such topics as:

• The World Around You: How to act now
• The Home: Making slow and simple changes
• The Body: Going from chemicals to natural
• The Garden: How to farm anywhere
• Work and Play: Incorporating sustainable living into your routine
• Raw Food: Green recipes for you and Mother Earth
• Spirituality: Discovering the feeling of togetherness

It's easy to become complacent with a routine, so to help free you of bad habits, each chapter ends with seven challenges for you to try at home. Finally transform thought into action and lend a helping hand toward making our planet a better place for future generations to come. Even the smallest of changes can make a difference!

Permaculture is more than just the latest buzzword; it offers positive solutions for many of the environmental and social challenges confronting us. And nowhere are those remedies more needed and desired than in our cities. The Permaculture City provides a new way of thinking about urban living, with practical examples for creating abundant food, energy security, close-knit communities, local and meaningful livelihoods, and sustainable policies in our cities and towns. The same nature-based approach that works so beautifully for growing food—connecting the pieces of the landscape together in harmonious ways—applies perfectly to many of our other needs. Toby Hemenway, one of the leading practitioners and teachers of permaculture design, illuminates a new way forward through examples of edge-pushing innovations, along with a deeply holistic conceptual framework for our cities, towns and suburbs.

The Permaculture City begins in the garden but takes what we have learned there and applies it to a much broader range of human experience; we’re not just gardening plants but people, neighborhoods and even cultures. Hemenway lays out how permaculture design can help town dwellers solve the challenges of meeting our needs for food, water, shelter, energy, community and livelihood in sustainable, resilient ways. Readers will find new information on designing the urban home garden and strategies for gardening in community, rethinking our water and energy systems, learning the difference between a “job” and a “livelihood,” and the importance of placemaking and an empowered community.

This important book documents the rise of a new sophistication, depth and diversity in the approaches and thinking of permaculture designers and practitioners. Understanding nature can do more than improve how we grow, make or consume things; it can also teach us how to cooperate, make decisions and arrive at good solutions.